LETTERS: NORTH COUNTY, FEB. 15, 2013

Address the data

When DNA was discovered in 1953, it came to light that it was an information-bearing mechanism they called the “genetic code.”

The “code” was composed of four letters (ACGT) representing four nucleic bases, called nucleotides. In highly specified sequences, they provide the information in the cell to produce the energy necessary for life, the synthesis of proteins and enzymes for chemical reactions; in essence, they produced life.

Computers use a series of zeros and ones to produce the “binary code” that gives us the information to form sentences and books. The binary code is very complicated with just two digits, so the genetic code, with four letters in conjunction with 20 amino acids, is inherently more complicated and capable of representing vastly more information.

All codes of which I am aware are created by some form of intelligence. Herein, we have the “DNA enigma.” How can undirected chemicals perform the wonders that evolutionary thinking requires? I ask one question: Where did that information come from?

I try to give data from science, not interpretations from scientists, so would people like Mary Becker (“Creationist tactics mislead the public,” Dec. 21), instead of castigating Christianity and the messenger, please address the data? It would be refreshing.

Irvin Forbing

Escondido

Writer would welcome serious counter-argument

Dan Shapiro (“Would welcome serious gun control discussion,” Jan. 31) responded to an earlier letter I wrote (“Nonsense on gun control,” Jan. 25), but doesn’t make a serious counter-argument.

He starts off by saying, “Jack needs to read the Supreme Court decision, ‘District of Columbia v Heller.’”

Yes, I am aware of that decision — I discussed it in an earlier letter. As I previously stated, Heller (2008) was a terrible decision by an activist conservative court that broke with 200 years of case law on the subject.

I suggest Mr. Shapiro and like-minded thinkers read Miller (1939) or Lewis (1980). I urge anyone who doubts me to review either of these cases.

In Lewis, the Supreme Court “reaffirmed the position first established in U.S. v. Miller that ‘the Second Amendment guarantees no right to keep and bear a firearm that does not have “some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia’ ”
(http://utsd.us/XWgKU4).

Mr. Shapiro later makes a curious statement: “Everyone knows that guns kill people.” He apparently hasn’t paying much attention to the gun control debate. Anyone who follows the news constantly hears the cliché, “people kill people, not guns,” by the National Rifle Association and its supporters.

Second Amendment is not obsolete

With respect to Bruce Thompson (“The Second Amendment is obsolete,” Feb. 2), and thanks to his son for his military service, I think their view that the Second Amendment is obsolete is myopic.

Beginning with “the blessings of liberty,” our founders specifically guaranteed a number of individual rights that the government shouldn’t mess with. The “right to keep and bear arms” is only one. The overriding premise of the Constitution is that the individual is sovereign in his enumerated rights and the government is restrained from infringing upon those rights.

The right to own a gun for the protection of life and property is as rational today as it was 200 years ago. As for owning a gun to oppose tyranny in this age of rockets, tanks and aircraft, that’s a moot point. What is significant is the understanding that there will be no “tyranny” to oppose as long as government adheres to the constitutional restraints the framers placed upon it.

Grant Kuhns

Carlsbad

Words have meanings

J. Howard Crews claims the first four words of the Second Amendment are key (“A well regulated militia is key,” Feb. 2).

He’s right. He just doesn’t have the correct key.

Coming home on leave in the mid ‘70s, after just joining the National Rifle Association, I had a question about the Second Amendment for my dad, an American history teacher. As usual, instead of telling me, he had me look it up. He gave me an old dictionary he had used in 1950 getting his Masters at Bowling Green State University.

I looked up “militia” and saw the usual definitions. But at the end of the article was the notation: “archaic: 18th century America. All male citizens, 18 to 45 years of age.” “Not an organized military group, rather all citizens capable of serving in times of need.”

I then looked up the word “regulated” and again found the same notation, “archaic: 18th century American. To demonstrate proficiency.”

Translating 18th century legalese into 21st century common American, the Second Amendment would read: “A citizenry, proficient in the use of firearms, being necessary to the security of a free state, etc.” Words have meanings and we need to understand what was meant when they were written.

Craig Vansant

Escondido

Must be tough for true believers

Professor Jeffrey Bada repeats the oft-cited, but unsupported, claim “that CO2 increase is the major factor in global warming,” by appealing to authority without establishing the exact association between CO2 and globally increasing temperatures (“Global warming redux,” Feb. 3).

It must be tough for true believers to have to constantly beat down the deniers, infidels, skeptics and nonbelievers. Forty years ago, the same gurus predicted a coming ice age. That didn’t pan out, so they built a new bandwagon, anthropogenic global warming; i.e., mankind’s actions are directly warming the planet, catastrophically.

No one doubts that the globe has warmed less than a degree Celsius, for the past 100-plus years. Just like it has in the past. It was also cooling as recently as 1970 and, although CO2 has continued increasing at a constant rate the past 60 years, the temperature rise has inexplicability stopped the past 15 years, contrary to all the computer models believers rely upon.

The primary bone of contention between the believers and the so-called deniers is whether man-made CO2 is the main driver of climate change. Many scientists don’t think so.

Guess who has a major stake in the CO2-drives-temperature theory? Prof. Bada and the resident “keep the government grants coming” Scripps Institution of Oceanography club.

John Baltutis

San Diego

Drone control?

To the gun control people, I have one question: How do you feel about President Obama’s drone program?